If Zhou En Lai ruled China rather than Mao

Upon Zhou returning to Yanan from Chongqing, a slow subtle change in the Party had irrevocably taken place;  Mao Zedong was in charge.   From the end of the Long March, to the one by one failings of his rivals, Mao eventually stood head and shoulders above everyone except for one person.  That would be Zhou.

Upon Zhou's return from Chongqing, Mao felt he had enough power and influence to basically browbeat Zhou into submission.

Zhou could've easily said "fuck off" and called Mao's bluff.  But he didn't.  Zhou could've challenged Mao, and quite quickly have put the "fear of  Marx" in Mao, but he did not.  Most of China's future leaders quite frankly owed their allegiance to Zhou En Lai.

His immediate, unswerving show of loyalty to Mao was impressive, and devoid of ego.  And signaled to his colleagues that Mao would indeed be the future leader of China going forward.  Zhou was perhaps just tired.  But he also at the end of the day had someone he could come home to, and that was his wife.  While Mao was on his final wife, Zhou was still on his first.   Zhou simply didn't need to be the Top Dog in China.  Mao apparently did.  It perhaps filled a "hole" in his inner search for stability.  Something he never truly found.  Something Zhou always had.  Surrounded by his adopted kids.  One of which was persecuted to death at a young age, another eventually becoming the Premier of China, the infamous Li Peng.

Indeed, one is simply astonished at the willingness of Zhou to bend to Mao's will.  Was the Korean War necessary?  The many movements throughout the 1950's, the betrayal of Peng Dehuai in 1959, culminating in the Cultural Revolution.   As such it is clear to me that Zhou had early on realized the mistake of creating the personality cult of Mao, and as such understood perhaps the only way to bring about positive change for China was from within.

I'm sure his colleagues agreed with him.

But what if a struggle had taken place?  Or perhaps during the Long March, Zhou asserted his personality not on the mechanics of keeping the peace and building up communication channels with the West and KMT?  What if he was not the Communist Party's Chief Diplomat during the war, but rather the leader of China?

Again, I believe the only way Mao gains the leadership of China during the Long March was not through some formal vote of a weak Politburo or governing committee but merely through the acquiescence of The Man himself, Zhou En Lai.

Yet as Stalin was destined either by  hook or crook to dominate Russia after Lenin, so was Mao destined to rule China himself.   But Zhou would have had to have made a mistake for that to so easily  take place.   And going to Wuhan, and later to Chongqing was that mistake.  In essence, Mao "got rid" of Zhou En Lai for a lengthy enough period, lengthy enough to consolidate his power once and for all.  Indeed, Zhou's willingness to go, to leave Yanan in my mind was Zhou's way of telling Mao that he was willing to hand over any challenge of power to Mao himself.  That Mao had nothing to fear.

But I want to go back to the "what if", of this post.

As I think more of it,  I believe upon reflection  Zhou would have defeated Chiang Kai Shek after all.   And with Zhou in charge, relations with the West would have been that more palatable.   It's strange the only dictators so adamantly anti-Western tend to be those who have never traveled abroad...Stalin....Mao come to mind. The first Kim of North Korea.  Even Ho Chi Minh was not in the beginning so Anti-Western.  Rather, he was dragged through American ignorance into that view.

So Zhou indeed would have defeated CKS, and China would have been a strong Communist nation.

Now what?

The first question is what of Mao?  If Zhou had beaten back Mao, which he easily could have up until the early late thirties, early forties, than what would have become of the Great Helmsman?  The only answer is he would have been shuffled off to his hometown perhaps?  Certainly nothing terrible would have become of him.   Perhaps even still on the Politburo.

So after dealing with Mao, what of the rest?

I think the 1950's would have reflected the "confidence" of Zhou the administrator.

Indeed, I believe he would have ruled more as "first among equals" than anything else.  Deng Xiaoping, Peng DeHuai, Liu Shaoqi all would have had their fair say.  And they would have been listened to.

But there's simply no way in hell Zhou would have taken China into Korea.  The West had still not been won, for starters.  People tend to think China in October 1949 was already a fully functioning Communist State. Far from it.  Tibet and Sichuan were still in play. Troops were still in the field.

China was simply in tatters.  Stalin was busy rebuilding Mother Russia.  All foreign banks and businesses were either nationalized or ran out of town.  Zhou would have acted with aplomb.  The Korean War would probably never had even been brought up.  Mao in the beginning was the only one willing to fight in North Korea.  However, Mao's reasoning was sound:  China simply couldn't countenance an American army on its border.  A military with nuclear weapons.

Zhou simply wasn't as xenophobic as Mao.  He spoke "their" language.  He had dealt with the West by that time for nearly thirty years on a near continuous basis.  Zhou would not have thought like Mao in terms of ideology, such as "helping a comrade", and other rubbish.   His view would have been more nuanced.

One wonders if Zhou even would have tried to even establish diplomatic relations with America?

This perhaps would have failed.  America, full of diplomatic hubris, still convinced Stalin and China were working in concert against America, would have fought such detente.  After all, had not the Berlin Airlift Crisis only just ended?  America was simply in no mood to accommodate the Communists on anything.

I think the 1950's would have indeed been a Cold War.  A war where America did not speak to nearly half the planet's people, or territory. Good Grief.  This indeed was a dark moment in my view of the Eisenhower Era.   His willingness to go along with the stark black white views of John Foster Dulles surely kept America from making peace with China.  Call it the "lost decade".

Meanwhile, what of  the great "let a hundred flowers bloom" or "anti-Rightist Campaigns"?   Would these have taken place? I don't think so.  Again, I think Zhou was simply too comfortable in his skin to worry about criticism, and Mao wasn't.  The Party Leadership had oh so quickly forgotten the lessons from the Jiangxi Soviet.

 However, it is ironic that it was these movements that did so much to actually solidify the  authority of Mao.

Most of all, Zhou did not live by dogma.  He was not an ideologue.  You may say I fall into the trap of  painting Zhou as a revisionist pragmatist.  But History bears this out, does it not?  His time in Europe as a young man gave him invaluable insight as to how "China's condition" needed to improve.  He had context!  And this is something Mao never had.  China needed someone whom could rule with a more nuanced hand.  Mao was a genius infighter.  And he consolidated his power superbly.  But Zhou wasn't around. And you know what, I don't think it would've mattered if he was.

Zhou reflected his failings later in a dramatic fashion.  As did everybody else.  

The 1950's could've been easier on China.  The 1959 Lushan Conference is a black mark on the reputation of Zhou that can never be washed away.  But the same can be said for everyone else in attendance.  

"The Party" had its chance to "retire" Mao.  It failed.  Miserably.  And millions paid the price. Zhou himself lost a daughter.   As soon as Mao threatened to return to the countryside and raise a new peasant army, the leadership promptly groveled.  The last thing any sensible person wanted was yet another civil war.  Another lost decade.   Zhou and his minions had created the Cult of Mao.  And realized too late this was a train they could never disembark from.  Mao was willing to create a scorched earth policy to get his way.  The others weren't.  Perhaps this was their way of justifying to themselves their own weakness.  In their own way, they perhaps reasoned that by complying with Mao's Will, they were saving China from itself.  Reform be damned.

China was on the edge of historical reform cum 1961.  But Mao fought them back...then down. In my view it was another thirty years before China could truly say to be on the path of reform. And who was the instigator?   Only one important person to my knowledge missed the Lushan Conference.  Deng Xiaoping. Alas, as the last man standing, his determination to see things through was just as much a monument to Zhou.  

All of these tragedies in Chinese History, from early in the Communist Reign through Reform in 1978, could have been avoided.  But Zhou made himself invisible.  Was he tired of all the intrigue?  I think he was.  After getting rid of CKS, he possibly felt he had no dragons left to slay.   As for Mao? Well, he saw dragons everywhere.  

Thus ends my last post on Zhou. Part 6.